The AMD Radeon R9 290 Review
by Ryan Smith on November 5, 2013 12:01 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
- AMD
- Radeon
- Hawaii
- Radeon 200
Company of Heroes 2
Our second benchmark in our benchmark suite is Relic Games’ Company of Heroes 2, the developer’s World War II Eastern Front themed RTS. For Company of Heroes 2 Relic was kind enough to put together a very strenuous built-in benchmark that was captured from one of the most demanding, snow-bound maps in the game, giving us a great look at CoH2’s performance at its worst. Consequently if a card can do well here then it should have no trouble throughout the rest of the game.
Unlike Metro, Company of Heroes 2 isn’t a title that the 290X gets throttled by nearly as much in our benchmarking, but it’s still something that once again demonstrates just how close 290 gets to 290X. 290 trails 290X by just 5%, a far cry from the $150 difference in price tags. Meanwhile because this is a game that AMD cards are doing so well in, the 290 also fares extremely well against the GTX 780, surpassing it by 23%. The performance gaps versus the 280X and GTX 770 are even larger yet, at 34% and 55% respectively.
Minimum framerates are similarly in AMD’s favor. On a relative basis the 290 falls behind the 290X by a little more here – by about 7% – due to the shader heavy workload of this benchmark’s most difficult scene, but that’s still only 7% behind a card 38% more expensive. Or to once again draw a GTX 780 comparison, it’s 33% faster.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
295 Comments
View All Comments
jljaynes - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
i said "good headphones" - I don't need to turn the sound way up to drown out my case fans - foam cups around my ears do that quite welltechkitsune - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Most serious gamers are likely to be using cans with some form of sound isolation or cancelling. Even my crummy $10 Sentry cans can cut about -10dBA off, which is surprisingly good for semi-open backed headphones.Homeles - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
"That, and any self respecting gamer uses a good set of headphones"Uh huh. Keep telling yourself that.
Ranger101 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
Ryan we didn't realise you were such an Nvidia fan boy, thanks for clarifying.dragonsqrrl - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
I'm kind of surprised there haven't been more AMD fanboys in here accusing Anandtech and Ryan of bias and being bought out by Nvidia. What's going on? I can usually tell the time by you guys. I feel sort of insecure now, you guys are shaking my faith in your profound and reliable idiocy.HisDivineOrder - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
The AMD fanboys know that there was no way of disguising this launch as anything but a complete miscalculation on AMD's part. If they'd done anything less than what they did, well, they'd have seemed AMD biased. This is their cover. The more important ad dollars purchase will be a positive review of Kaveri, which should be coming up soon-ish.Spunjji - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
That's some twisted logic, HDO. Even for you.Homeles - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
That's interesting to say, in light of the very obvious free advertising grabbed by AMD employees who have jumped the gun when the NDA dropped and have grabbed the first comment on a pretty big handful of AMD product launches.Homeles - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
On AnandTech, that is.boot318 - Tuesday, November 5, 2013 - link
The reference cooler is the only downer about this card. Anyways, I think every reasonable human being was expecting this to be $450.... so great job AMD!BTW, Anandtech, I'll take the heat & noise for that performance & price. Another great review by you guys. I respect you guys for giving us you honest opinion during this review. Best on the net ;)